An item in the Extra Bases baseball notebook last Sunday misidentified, in some editions, the origin of the name Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver, which Mets pitcher R. A. Dickey gave one of his bats. Orcrist was not, as Dickey had said, the name of the sword used by Bilbo Baggins in the Misty Mountains in "The Hobbit"; Orcrist was the sword used by the dwarf Thorin Oakenshield in the book. (Bilbo Baggins's sword was called Sting.)

I love everyone involved in this correction — Dickey for the Tolkien homage, the Times for reporting it, the nerd readers for objecting, and the Times again for correcting the mistake so punctiliously. (Though if you want to be technical about it, Orcrist, in the Elvish language of Sindarin, means "goblin cleaver," and thus the Times's "Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver" is a redundancy.)